In addition to providing new details about an ancient civilisation that might have stretched all the way back to 200 BC, the inscriptions are evidence that the region was once home to a diverse culture, despite its harsh and desolate environment.

"Nowadays, the Jebel Qurma area, and the Black Desert in general, is a highly inhospitable area, very arid and difficult to cross," project leader Peter Akkermans, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Owen Jarus at Live Science.

"From an archaeological perspective, the vast basalt expanse is still one of the most poorly known parts of Jordan in particular and the Near East in general."

The newly found rock inscriptions now provide proof of human inhabitants, and the team has uncovered thousands of them so far.

They say that all of the inscriptions are written in the ancient Safaitic alphabet, which was used in the area now occupied by modern Jordan and Syria, and they suggest that the people who left them were likely nomadic.

"There are literally many thousands of Safaitic inscriptions and petroglyphs in the Jebel Qurma region, which suggests that people intensively used the area," Akkermans told Live Science.

Most of the inscriptions are of animals, such as gazelles and lions, while the ones that include text are, for the most part, just people's names. Why they're written like that remains a mystery.

"The precise reason for producing rock art - inscriptions and/or representations - is still unclear and open to discussion. What was the message which the producers of the rock art tried to convey?" said Akkermans.

Despite having so many examples to evaluate, there’s still a lot that needs to be done if researchers hope to understand the culture that once called the Black Desert home.

The team notes that understanding the culture’s nomadic lifestyle is of utmost importance, though there aren't many other details as to who wrote the inscriptions, or what their culture was truly like.

"Mobility was vital to the desert communities which were organised along lines of tribal affiliation and pastoral subsistence," the team writes. "Hence, insight into mobility is at the very heart of interpretation and essential to the proposed study."

Even more tantalising is how the landscape changed so much in just 2,000 years. If the team is correct, the region was once a much more hospitable place full of trees, wildlife, and fresh water.

"Our excavation at one site revealed masses of charcoal from the 3rd century AD, which appeared to represent several taxa [groups] of trees, which needed water year-round," Akkermans said.

"Hence, the conditions in at least the third century AD may have been quite different from today. This is certainly something I wish to explore in the next field seasons, by coring for pollen."